Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Girls mow their lawns

Ed here: Having spent a fair share of my younger and more innocent years in advertising I'm always up to hear what the new boys and girls have been able to sneak past the censors. Way back in the mid-Sixties, when I was starting out, the shocker and the benchmark was the print ad for a certain feminine hygiene product that was introduced with a headline that said that a woman's most tricky deodorant problem wasn't "under her pretty little arms."

Well, they're still at it. This is from Salon this morning. The commercial, for all its heavy-handedness, is a hoot. It exults in its own coyness. There's a link below.

Let's hand it to Wilkinson Sword ad group. In its new series of international ads for the Quattro for Women bikini razor, it manages to combine bouncy jingles with the most heavy-handed symbolism since Georgia O'Keeffe, all while tossing in a fair amount of finger-wagging bodily disgust.

If your thing isn't trimmed, tamed and tufted within a centimeter of its cute little life, who's going to plant their tulips in that jungle?

In the company's MGM-worthy U.K. commercial (posted below), a comely, cat-wielding lass declares her cure for the blues is to "mow the lawn." As she and a bevy of pals push their mowers (pink, of course), they winkingly sing that "some bushes are really big," although the Asian chick has a bonsai that's "really small." I swear to God:

Well, this is certainly an example of a Viral (or potentially spirochetal) campaign...I've certainly not seen the ad elsewehere. As an example of getting people to consider spending money and effort for use of absolutely unnecessary products, it is indeed a remarkable advertising coup.